In lieu of Sunday Cooking

I am not home this weekend so no Sunday Cooking post. Instead here is a catchup on my outfits of last week. The last two days of the workweek started to see some favorite cardigans making a reappearance.



I bought the animal-stripe sleeveless top at Macys last spring while we were downtown for the weekend, and I have not worn it since. I have no idea why; it's very cute. On Wednesday, I dug it out of the bottom of my shirt drawer and paired it with the pewter BR lariat necklace and Bobeau teal drape sweater.



The outfit finished off with some Gap Real Skinnies and my Vince Camuto brogue cowboy boots. The skinnies are really too short for anything but being tucked into boots, alas.



Thursday was a return of the new Sejour drawstring purple sweater from Nordstrom. It is so perfect for this mild winter, and I just like it against white. I paired it with my navy pinstripe bootcut pants; my brown BOC clogs weren't my first choice of shoes, but the pants are too long for anything but a 4-inch heel and those were all I had. Gotta get those pants to the tailor!




Friday was all about bundling up; we had flurries all day. Luckily it only ended up being less than an inch of snow on the ground, but it was COLD.



This is an old H&M long grey sweater, so cozy on the coldest days. I paired it with a dark green LOFT layering top, black Gap bootcut pants, black Naturalizer booties, and an Old Navy necklace made of green/teal ombre beads. This one is the definition of "Dress Like a Normal Person"; I've owned most of this for two years, minimum, and have worn them all countless times.

Lastly, I also often "eat like a normal person". Here is how I packed my lunch on Friday.



See? It isn't always cute lunch boxes and Bentos. But it's still pretty much the same foods.



Squash soup (in the blue container), the last of the quiche, navel orange, crackers and cheese wedge. It was tasty!

My Sister Rocks!

My sister loves my lunchbox photos.



Fusilli whole wheat pasta with homemade meatballs and sauce, tossed with a box of spinach and some parmesan cheese sprinkled on top. Clementine oranges and cold roasted carrots fill the other two boxes, and dried pineapple rings were my snack.

It's just leftovers from dinner the night before and some fruit, but it sure looks appealing, doesn't it?

Also got a quick shot of my outfit in the bathroom mirror since I had the camera out. We are finally having some genuine winter so it was time to wrap up in an oversized knit. Old Navy heathered cream rolled neck sweater and a cabbage-rose silky scarf. The bottom was my brown NYDJ ponte skinnies and brown suede BOC clogs.



But mostly this post is a thank-you to my sister. We have both been going up and down the scale over the last couple of years, and she is currently kicking my butt in the dieting game. She's been on Medifast since...the summer, maybe, and is down nearly sixty pounds. Whoohoo! We're already planning a joint reward for ourselves for maintenance (not loss, maintenance -- which is much harder for us both) and are talking about beaches and spas and whatnot.

Anyway. Since we haven't been able to both be skinny bitches at the same time (YET), we have been sharing clothes. She lives in Connecticut and I live in Illinois, so it's not like when we were kids and would raid each other's drawers. ;-D When I was down, I sent her a couple of boxes of my larger sizes, and as she has been going down, she's been sending them back.

I got a box from her in the mail yesterday, and it was like old home week. My beloved button-downs from Forth and Towne! Sweaters I had completely forgotten about! Ooooh, a bunch of new skirts from Lane Bryant from her own purchases. The box had been sitting outside my door all day so everything was still too cold to try on last night, but my plan this weekend is to go through it all and see what fits now and what is for later. It's like I went spree shopping without spending money!

I've been really lax about my outfits and taking photos lately, mostly because I keep re-wearing the same stuff and I am sick of all of it. So I am challenging myself next week to incorporate as many "new" things from the box as possible, and taking a photo every day. And then posting it. *gasp*

You can thank my sister for the inspiration.

Merry Merry and all that jazz

Lunch/Snacks on Tuesday:



The Great Gift Basket onslaught has begun. We got a couple of them from vendors this week, one of which was a Trader Joe's basket. Candy Cane Jo-Jo's, I cannot resist you. So I am doubling-down on bringing in lunch as much as possible this week, and making sure on the few nights we are home we are eating from the fridge, not from the delivery boy. So far, so good -- we had a potluck lunch yesterday, and I brought baked (whole wheat) ziti, and everyone else brought salad, veggies, fruit salad...and chocolate cake. But the ratio of healthy to junky was much higher than usual potlucks, so maybe I'm starting to rub off on them!

I only got a quick shot in the mirror in the morning of my outfit. Not sure if it really worked; there is something funky about the proportions of that black chunky knit Kohls sweater on top. I think it's too short for my body, because it tends to remind me of a superhero cape when I wear it. Hmm, it might be time to retire it. It's starting to pill, anyway...



This was the baked pasta I brought. I felt so bad; I mixed together spinach and homemade tomato sauce together with some chopped chicken sausage for the pasta, but as soon as I mixed in the low-fat ricotta cheese the whole thing went from an appealing red and green to a brown goop. Sigh. But it came out pretty well; everyone had some at work, and Hubby polished off the last of it when I brought it home.



Wednesday was a good outfit day.



Nordstrom Babeau teal cardigan, LOFT beaded necklace, Gap polka-dot blouse, Nordstrom patent skinny belt, INC ponte skirt from Macys, Assets tights from Target, and my beloved Vince Camuto boots from Nordstrom. The outfit was completely based on the boots; they are my "flat" boots, so are ideal for this period while my back is healing.





Self-portrait!

Don't know if I'll be able to post any other entries before we leave for Christmas, so I wish you all a Merry Christmas, a lovely weekend, and peace to all.

Snow Bunny

Not that we have anything more than a dusting of snow. I just think I bundled up like a (business casual, kinda dressy) snow bunny.



Cream heathered turtleneck sweater, Old Navy
Black ponte skirt, Macys
Cognac open-weave belt, Walmart
Black Assets tights, Target
mushroom Franco Sarto fitted boots, Zappos
mess of double-strand pearls, brown string necklace and tiger's-eye necklace from Shopping Friend

I don't know what is going on with my red face. I have had a terrible rash for days. I am switching face washes, from Aveeno Calming to Cetaphil, too see if that helps. Aveeno has done me well for years, but maybe it's not enough anymore. Dunno,

Another hibernating bear look. I swear, it is much cuter in person!



Cinnamon chunky knit sweater, Old Navy
White layering tee, Old Navy
Brown studded belt, Walmart
Lucite statement necklace, LOFT
Brown NYDJ ponte skinnies, Nordstrom
Brown suede BOC clogs, DSW

Then it was the weekend, and I cooked. Two soups were on the agenda, and both I made from scratch.

The first was a smoky black bean soup that I have been making for years from an old WW Core recipe. It's Hubby's favorite and was a personal request. But it's so easy I decided to challenge myself and made the beans from scratch too, instead of from a can. !! Really, it's very easy to do.

Start with a bag of beans.



Pour them onto a jelly-roll pan and pick through any discolored or wrinkled ones, and check for any pebbles. (I was going to not even mention the pebbles because it's so rare when I find one, then I DID find one in this bag. So there you go -- check for pebbles!)

Rinse the beans and put them in a pot with a lot of water. Like, a couple of inches above the beans at least. Bring to a boil, then skim off any foam from the top. Turn down to a simmer and add a tsp of kosher salt for every cup of beans. (I added that and some smoky flavoring to it. Dunno if it did any good.) Let actively simmer for 60-90 minutes, checking at the 30-minute mark and every 15 minutes after that. Add more water if necessary.

You will end up with almost twice as much cooked beans than raw, and they freeze easily. So make the whole bag, and then freeze it in 2-cup portions -- which is a can from the store. Easy as pie, and much less sodium! :) I think I did 4 cups raw and ended up with 8 cups cooked.



Once they had cooled (and it was late enough in the day that it was time for supper), I made them into soup, starting with sauteed onions, garlic and 2 chopped red peppers in a pot. Add the beans, some chopped bacon or Canadian bacon, add 1 tsp cumin and 1/2 tsp of chipotle and stir 30 seconds until fragrant, add 4 cups chicken stock and bring to boil. Season with salt and more smoky seasoning if desired, then let actively simmer for about 30 minutes. Use the immersion blender to chop it up.

For me, I loved that butternut squash soup so much last week I made it again. But this time I did some hardcore roasting; I cut up into chunks 2 small butternut squash, 2 small onions, 2-3 carrots, a Yukon Gold potato, and tossed it all with olive oil, kosher salt and Northwoods seasoning. Then I cut off the top of a garlic clove and nestled it in the middle of the pan.





I baked it at 400 degrees for 45 minutes, just until everything was super-soft and just starting to brown. It took a lot of willpower not to inhale it all right then! But I squeezed the garlic out of the papery skin, and let it all cool for the afternoon.



For the soup, I followed the same recipe as last week; I even though there was onion and carrot in the roasted veggies, I still diced up a small onion, couple of celery stalks and some carrots as the base of the soup, and sauteed them in a pot with olive oil. I also pulled out as much of the onion as I could from the veggies and chopped those into smaller pieces. Once everything was softened, I added all the veggies and about 4-6 cups of chicken stock (low-sodium, I like to control the salt I use with just pinches of kosher salt). Bring to a boil, simmer for 20 minutes, then use the immersion blender to mix it all up.

The finished products.





I have to tell you, roasting all the vegetables together with seasoning was a brilliant addition to the squash recipe. I can't describe it well, but the soup tastes like "roasted", especially the sweet garlic depth. I am so glad I made practically a double-batch; I will be eating it like crazy this week. Hubby also loved the black bean soup, whew! He likes things with more heat than I do, and this had a lot of heat and smokiness.

I also have plans for a quiche with sun-dried tomatoes, leeks, and goat cheese, but I wasn't in the mood to make it yesterday so I will save it for later in the week. Hubby is off today, so he is making the long-awaited BBQ portabello mushroom quesadillas we have been dying to try for dinner tonight for us.

Hunh, we sure do eat well on the Foodstyle! Probably better than when we are wimping out and ordering pizza. :)

The Glamorous Life

Yeah, that's my electric meter in the shot. I have now revealed the secret I've been cropping out for months: the space where I take my photos is right between my patio door, the meter reader, and our grill.

Don't let anyone ever fool you into believing fashion bloggers all lead glamorous lives. ;-D

Just getting a "good enough" photo can be troublesome some days. I have a custom timer set on my camera, so I shoot 4 pictures with 2-seconds between each shot, and I have 10 seconds from when I hit the button to get into position before it starts.

So if I take two sets in a couple of minutes, this is what I get.



From there I pick the best one or two; selection is swift and brutal. Look fat, bad pose, look fat, dorky smile, lead arms, blurry, bad hair, look fat, oooh I can work with that and that. I then crop and enhance in iPhoto. If it needs anything more than that, I don't bother.

Cropping helps a lot, most importantly by bringing me and my outfit front and center into the shot. After all, that's why you're here, isn't it?



Day 2 of chunky knits and unexpected neutral combinations. I've learned the hard way that chunky knits really only work on me when they are short-sleeved; anything else and I start to resemble a hibernating bear. :) The pants are a new pair of Gap straight legs -- I loved them so much in black I got them in graphite grey too. The knit is also new from Old Navy; the pumpkin spice color isn't for everyone, but for me it was irresistible! I liked the two together, so the rest of the outfit was just to serve that combination: dusty brown ON layering top, my trusty brown suede BOC heeled clogs, brown studded belt from Walmart (I know!). The necklace is one I bought from my sister from Lia Sophia last year, but I hadn't been able to find the right outfit for it until now. Phew!

You may have noticed I have a lot of new stuff from Gap and Old Navy; I did well during their Black Friday sale. Even better, it was all online; no lines, no fuss, no early-morning insanity. Best kind of Black Friday there is!

Okay, all caught up from last week. It took a bit to get back into the swing of daily photos, but I think I am back!

Emily missed you guys too. She was contemplating making a break for it...if only her head was smaller. :)

Hey, this posting thing still works!

Boots, meet the internet.

Internet, meet my boots.



Laura and Angie recommended these a couple of weeks ago on YLF, and I snapped up a pair in mushroom. Like I said at the time, a stretch boot is the best look for me, and I was interested in getting a new pair this year.

But once I got them, I hesitated.

They were really snug at the calf, almost too snug. And I didn't have time to email Laura to ask if they stretched. :) I knew from experience they probably did, but still...I dithered. I had ordered a second different style at the same time, and those immediately went back: too high in the arch. These felt almost too high too, which added to the uncertainty.

So I utilized my 3-outfit method for determining if I am keeping an item; I tried on 3 different outfits to judge. This was the second, and it was a winner. Once I put this on together, any doubts I had about the boots vanished.




My trusty H&M long chunky-knit cardigan provides the base -- everything else is new. The Old Navy blouse, a long-needed ponte black skirt from Macys, new Assets patterned grey tights from Target, and my new favorite long silver-and-gold mesh necklace from LOFT. I felt very sleek and chic in this; lot of neutrals but not all-black.

The platform is amazing; it keeps them in the 3-inch range for my arch even though they're actually taller. All my worry was for nothing; turns out I love this best of all! I love wearing platforms in the summer in the form of wedges; I didn't realize how fun a heel could be as a platform too!

The hair will remain overgrown for the next couple of posts while I catch up on last week's outfits; I finally got it cut and colored on Saturday. Whew!

Team Straight Leg

Follow-up on my last post:
1. Hurray for the resounding approval of my new bag! As you will soon see, it has already been put into rotation, so I guess it's a keeper. :)
2. I am still laughing at RoseAG's comment: Isn't that gunmetal jacket the one with documented color-coordination issues? Ha! Spoken like a true fellow IT project nerd. :) And yes, yes it is. I should know better by now, but I keep trying with that one!

 Monday was rather a boring day, sartorial-wise. I did some closet rearranging, and am making a concerted effort to remix my new pieces with my older ones as much as possible. I feel like this summer it was all new, new, new, probably because it was all new dresses and my awesome sandal collection. This season I'm trying for more of a balanced approach. For now.



I am officially in love with this cozy knit long sweater from Old Navy. I remixed the white sleeveless tank with the bow, also from Old Navy, but this time swapped in a black stretch belt instead of the self-belt. The grey pants are Ashley Stewart, which I bought last spring but never really cottoned to, and the shoes are my grey tweed Ann Taylor Outlet flats.

I like being able to work in rarely-worn pieces like the pants and shoes, and I love when they work together.




I think I need to re-evaluate the hem on those pants, though. I'd rather be able to wear them with heels than flats. Hmm.

The best part of the outfit, of course, was the new Coach bag!








Yeah, it's a keeper.

Tuesday was another remix, and the debut of my new True Straight Leg pants from Gap. I wish I could wear these pants every day. Oh. My. God.




This was another version of a cream top (my Lauren Conrad tee with embellished horizontal lines) with the cream Gap sweater, then adding a sweet pink and brown floral infinity scarf (a Christmas gift from my mother-in-law) to break it up at my face. The shoes are brown suede BOC heeled clogs from DSW, a favorite find from last fall and available at DSW again this year. I guess clogs aren't totally done yet!

But the real star of the outfit are these new pants. Angie asked yesterday if readers were Team Wide Leg or Team Bootcut, and my answer is that I am Team Straight Leg. It is hands-down the style that looks best on my body shape. I'm not a small woman, in any way, and my legs are my best asset; the larger I get, the more pronounced my pear shape gets at my hips, but then it quickly thins out from my knee down. So a bootcut tends to look like a mermaid-shape on me, and makes my hips even bigger. And a wide leg...well, it looks like Monday's shots. Kind of shapeless and everything is the same size as my thighs and hips. Not my best look.

Skinnies, too, pose their own problems; their streamlined shape is actually too pronounced for my legs, and I look like an ice cream cone. But straight legs have all the virtues of a skinny (highlights my lower legs) but in a less pronounced way.







Truthfully, all of my "skinnies" are really straight legs: the NYDJ ponte pants, my old Kut from the Cloth jeans, etc. But these new ones are really the best of the bunch. The fabric is a great heavy stretch, which keeps its shape but still has some nice give to it. They feel exactly like Banana Republic's Martin Fit pants did a couple of years ago. I am IN LOVE.

Lastly, in case you were worried I have been going way too neutral lately:



I am still me!

Earning My Weekend

I just posted on Facebook that this was a week in which I really earned my weekend. You know those rough ones, where you have no idea how you are going to get to the end of it? That was my week. But I made it! And after work tonight, Hubby and I are headed downtown for a luxurious weekend staying at a swanky hotel in one of the ritziest areas of the city. Our fifteenth anniversary (15! It still blows me away) is next week, so we squeezed in some time to ourselves to celebrate.

Well, ourselves, and my trusty camera so I can share it with the internet. And the thousands of tourists. Yay, alone time! :) :)

Anyway, throughout the week, I did get dressed, and I did take pictures most days! This was Monday:





Ignore the dorky smile. The next one is better, but the pose isn't as good.




I liked this outfit; I finally managed to make this new cream Gap sweater work. Instead of going for contrast with a dark piece underneath, I wore a complementary lighter top, also from Gap. But that much cream is not good for my complexion, so the teal scarf broke it up nicely. Heh, now that I think about it, the skinny black pants are Gap too, and the pewter mesh cuff and lariat necklace are Banana Republic. I really do put that Gap card to use! The only non-Gap/BR items in this one are the grey Vera Wang flats from Kohls.




Look at "Bruiser" back there watching the photo shoot. She's the best.


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Tuesday was completely insane. I don't even remember what I wore! But Wednesday was another long sweater/skinny pant combo; I am rather enjoying this new (to me) flop-proof formula this season. It's probably not trendy at all, but if I am wearing skinny pants I have to wear a long sweater over my dupa. I have tried a million tunic tops, and they are just not flattering. This works much better for my short-waist, long-legged, pear-hips self.







I absolutely LOVE this new Old Navy sweater (I wore it with a white undertop last week). It is ridiculously comfortable, and so cozy. The temps have been relatively warm this week, and unfortunately this particular day we went on a ghost tour after work, so I was a little warm in it. But the t-shirt underneath was wearable without a sweater, and by the end of the night I had the sweater back on as it cooled. So it all worked out!




This was fun, pairing up dark blues and black. The sweater is a marled combo of the two colors, and the top was from Marshalls this summer while shopping with my mom. The NYDJ skinnies came out for this, and the Clarks open-toed booties kept me cool when the temps rose. (Good thing I have a dark polish on my toes right now; it's perfect for fall wearing of open-toed shoes.) To keep it a little light, I wore two long necklaces, one with clear lucite stones, and the other with light green and light blue beach-glass stones. Plus my turquoise glasses, of course. I've been wearing them almost every day lately.

Here's a spooky picture I took on the ghost tour. We didn't see any ghosts, alas, but I made a bunch of us line up and recreate in shadows the St Valentine's Day massacre at the original site. The light really was that orangey-red behind us. Like the blood of the victims....spooky!





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Friday was...an adventure in photography.




Um...forget something?





Um...forget something else? Focus, ding-dong!

Unfortunately I did not notice until I downloaded the pics this morning, so that's the best shot of it I have. But it is the cropped Old Navy denim jacket, the Target red peacock-pattern dress, black leggings and black pointed toe flats from DSW from last year.

I did get a clean shot of the bracelet combination I put together. Several are from the Hive and Honey set from Piperlime, and the two shinier silver ones with purple and green-yellow stones are from Charming Charlie's. A new store opened up a couple of towns over. I have a couple of necklaces I can't get to work so will be returning, but I loved these bracelets. They looked way more expensive than they were!





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Have a great weekend, everyone! I will try to catch up on my blogs when I get back; I have many sitting in my tabs on Firefox. :)